As Brat Summer gives way to Sorceress Autumn (please credit me when this inevitably catches on), here’s hoping killer music released by artists like Chelsea Wolfe, King Woman, and Iress earlier this year get another wave of attention. In the meantime, Dallas-based songwriter Nicole Marxen has returned three and a half years after her debut EP Tether to present a fully formed iteration of that release’s gothic-rock and darkwave ideas. Thorns sees Marxen leaning further into pagan visual, lyrical, and instrumental aesthetics while furthering her own unique balance of operatic rock and eerie electronic sounds as she translates bodily disorder, dream life, and the very real-world experience of directly suffering from the patriarchal indiscretion of those in power into a witch’s brew of bubbling sonic anxiety.
“I started writing this record during lockdown,” Marxen shares of the project’s inception and the origins of its lyrical themes. “We were still mixing my first EP and the wound of my mother’s death had been freshly reopened. I didn’t want to use music as escapism like I had in the past—I felt this nudge to lean into discomfort. I see each song as a different thorn; its truth stings, yet beauty persists.”
With the full collection of stinging beauty arriving tomorrow, check out an early stream of the full LP below. You can also pre-order Thorns here. And folks: Don’t let any presidential campaigns know about Sorceress Autumn. Let’s leave that one for the people.
